As much as 91% of India’s workforce of 475 million is informal, lacking social insurance. The latest effort on social security is India’s Social Security Code 2020, which merges eight existing laws. The paper finds the Code wanting by comparing it with the principles that should guide social...

Amidst the bleak picture of increasing joblessness and indebtedness presented by employment surveys and debt surveys, a minimum standard of living for India's poor seems to be under threat. The sudden exogenous shock of COVID-19 to the incomes of the poor has made the case of a minimum income...

Progress towards the target of universal access to basic education by the year 2000, set by two global conferences in 1990, has been too slow in many countries. Most of the reasons for this inadequate progress are country-specific. However, in virtually all countries one explanation stands out:...

Home based work has a dual and contradictory character: on the one hand, as a source of income diversification for poor workers and the emergence of micro-enterprises, yet on the other, it is a source of exploitation of vulnerable workers as firms attempt to contain costs. This paper examines...

Within the last decade governments of donors and developing countries have committed themselves to achieving a number of International Development Targets (IDTs) to be reached by 2015. These include halving the proportion of people living in extreme poverty and ensuring universal primary...

Child labour is widespread in home based manufacturing activities in the informal sector in most developing countries. This form of child labour will not attract the penal provisions of a country’s laws banning child labour. This paper draws on surveys carried out in five Asian countries –...

This paper examines the successes of ten 'high-achievers' - countries with social indicators far higher than might be expected given their national wealth. Their progress in such fields as education and health offers lessons for social policy elsewhere in the developing world. Based on...